Classic Flix Review: Bonnie & Clyde

Greetings all and sundry! I am pleased to have the opportunity to approach and dissect in my own unique fashion one of those films that arrives with not a lot of noise and hoopla. Takes the movie going audience by storm and creates a solid touchstone for actors and actresses no one has ever heard of before and plants them solidly in the cinematic firmament.…

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Directed masterfully with gusto and elan by Arthur Penn, wrapped tightly around the comely Faye Dunaway and roguishly handsome Warren Beatty. The film is an admirable blend of Depression era period piece. Clever doses of French New Wave Cinema. Grainy, washed out backdrops. Sweaty, humid bedroom scenes and good old fashioned Shoot ’em Ups.

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The film begins with Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie Parker waking from an afternoon nap due to noises outside her upstairs bedroom window. Only to spy a very nattily dressed Clyde Barrow trying to hot wire the car belonging to Bonnie mother. Bonnie confronts Clyde, who is a sly smooth talker of the highest order. And cajoles Bonnie into the idea that spending time with him beats the heck out of showing up for her shift as a waitress at a local restaurant.

The two head off for a future unknown as Clyde hints at his past and reveals a the butt of a pistol above his belt line. A scheme is hatched as the two roll into a close by town and Clyde enters the bank. Bonnie waits behind the wheel. Clyde returns in much more of a hurry than when he sauntered into the bank. Bonnie drives and the two are richer by just under one hundred dollars.

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Bonnie teases and taunts Clyde, The two wind up in bed littered with bills of small denomination and Bonnie decides that she wants to get in on the fun too! A wheel man and mechanic is happened upon. C.W. Moss, by name.Well and dullardly played by Michael J. Pollard, of the perpetual baby face. C.W. may not know how to make or count change, but he does know engines and becomes the third member of the ‘Barrow Gang’. Quickly augmented by Clyde’s older brother, Buck and his wife, Blanche. Well and memorably played by Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons.

Clyde, Buck and Bonnie get along well enough. Though Blanche grates on the nerves. Not wanting to get in on the fun of being modern Robin Hoods. Then taking out her aggression on Bonnie and C.W. Buck has his work cut out for himself trying to keep Blanche in line as bigger banks are robbed. One ending with a pursuing bank manager jumping on the running board of the escaping getaway car and being shot in the face for his efforts.

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The game has been changed and the ire of the law. Local, state and fledgling federal, has been stirred as the gang moves from Oklahoma to Texas between robberies and getaways to banjo picking Bluegrass. One step ahead of the law that relies upon telephone and telegraph lines to maintain pursuit. Bigger and better weapons are sought and acquired after a tete a tete with a Texas Ranger they’d gotten the drop on. Humiliated and photographed. And an impromptu, humorous taking of a car owned by Gene Wilder as a mortician.

Enter a dark, humid and quiet night. When every local lawman in the vicinity and beyond unloads on Bonnie, Clyde, Buck, Blanche and C.W. in their wooded cabin west of nowhere. Windows shatter and holes appear in walls. Fire is returned by Thompson Sub Machine Guns, shotguns, pistols and Browning Automatic Rifles. Bonnie reloads and Blanche panics and screams like a Banshee as she is shot. Buck is shot badly and dies shortly thereafter. Clyde is wounded, Blanche is blinded and captured as Bonnie, Clyde and C.W. get away.

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Bonnie tends to Clyde’s through-and-through wound with a willow branch wrapped in gauze. C.W. steals a car and the three make off to the Oklahoma dust bowl. While the Texas Ranger who had been humiliated. Well played by Denver Pyle for his brief time on screen; is brought in to interrogate Blanche. Things head south as Clyde recuperates in a shanty town and the three head off to C.W.’s distant uncle somewhere in Louisiana. C.W is taken into custody without incident by local lawmen, who at first mistake C.W. for Pretty Boy Floyd. With the covert help of his uncle Ivan in a cameo by Dub Taylor.

Bonnie feels the walls starting to close in and pens a prophetic poem while laying low. The two decide to see what the town has to offer and roll up on a car with a flat tire being tended to. Clyde slows and stops. Gets out and notices a preponderance of rifle and shotgun muzzles peeking through a line of vines and shrubbery. Then becomes the recipient of many, many bullets and pieces of buck shot while Bonnie is trapped in the car doing an odd variation of the Funky Chicken in a prolonged, slow motion dance of death.

What Makes This Film Good?

Arthur Penn at the helm. Telling a decent, though highly romanticized story that did not fare well as B Movie with Dorothy Provine a decade earlier. Penn reaches deep into his bag of tricks and amps up the chemistry between Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. Who, one moment is a coquette and the next displays a sensual assertiveness that would come to fruition later in The Thomas Crown Affair, Chinatown and Network.

Many early interior scenes are back lit with diffused shadows. Several exterior scenes range from lush to stark and barren with shadows supplied by clouds. In ways reminiscent of John Ford and French New Wave as Clyde chases Bonnie through a fallow corn field.

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Set direction and cinematography are far above average. Adding washed out blues, grays and greens to heighten the effects of a well researched and executed period piece. The banjo heavy Bluegrass tracts during assorted chase scenes works very well and started a minor resurgence for a few months afterward. Making the soundtrack something of an anomaly during the second term of LBJ. Which may have created the impetus to double bill Bonnie and Clyde with Bullitt during the summers of 1968 and 69.

What Makes This Film Great?

Watching a young and confident Warren Beatty transition from his television role as spoiled rich kid, Milton Armitage in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis to play a sly and conniving leading ladies’ man. Opposite another rising talent graduating from doing yeoman work in small television roles and Hurry Sundown and The Happening earlier that year. Backed up by a soon-to-be-noticed Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons, and veteran character actors Denver Pyle and Dub Taylor. In a film that jump started several careers, ala The Magnificent Seven.

Offered a plum opportunity for Beatty to produce and Penn to direct a character driven film very much of its time. That probably could not be made today without many more chase scenes and explosions!

For Penn’s wide open spaces of the Texas and Oklahoma Dust Bowls. The film would almost, out of budget concerns, need to be shot in Canada. Which may have worked for a backdrop in Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’, but would probably not work well in this instance.

A great film and as usual Jack, a great review. So many great performances in this film, especially Gene Hackman.

Apparently they’re still developing a remake of this film, a few years ago Justin Timberlake and some young actress were up for the lead roles but thankfully that never happened. I hope the remake never come to fruition, there’s no need for a remake.

Most excellent, watched it a few months back for the first time since I seen it at it’s original release, and still went like Wow, then went on a kick to watch Beatty in, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Parallax View, and REDS, also Penn’s 1962 movie The Miracle Worker. Would like to see Dick Tracy, and Bulworth sometime in the near future.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a very well detailed period piece. Still think Beatty’s best dramatic work is in The Parallax View . Though Reds always struck me an an overlong, though interesting film. One of the first
successful vanity projects.

Dick Tracy is a fun and surprisingly faithful take on Chester Gould’s comic strips from the 1940s. Especially the make-up work for its array of bad guys from Prune Face to Mumbles and Flat Top. Madonna’s Breathless Mahoney isn’t bad, either!

Thanks so much for adding to the conversation with your gfenerous comments.

Since film making is a collaborative effort. I like to point out memorable, excellent work when and where I see it.

Penn knows how to set a scene and Burnett Guffey knows how to get the most of what he can behind the camera. Kudos also to Dean Tavoularis for getting the right look and feel of surroundings just right.

Excellent review Jack as always. Haven’t had a chance to see this one yet but the cast for this is out of this world. That picture of Gene Hackman is almost unreal, I’m so used to seeing him as an older actor!

Hackman caught my attention with this film and made me seek his work in television. As a heavy in an episode of I Spy and as a priest in a made for an ABC made for TV movie, Shadow On The Land .

Thought he was great as a barn storming skydiver in The Gypsy Moths. A vagabond with Al Pacino in Scarecrow and a Marlowe
like Private Eye in Night Moves . His best roles are a toss up between
Jimmy Doyle in The French Connection and Harry Caul in The Conversation.

I remember being in awe of this film when I originally saw it as a young kid, and after watching it again back in 2010 I stay convinced that this is a truly magnificent cinema achievement. I remember being particularly enamored with the way Penn used the frame to capture the violence and yet remain distant from it – here’s what I wrote about this facet of the film in my own review: ”

Penn’s camera doesn’t shy away from the blood, nor does it wallow in the violence in a pornographic way – the frame doesn’t deviate from the violence and it’s consequences, yet remains somewhat alienated from its power. Indeed, a lot of the films critical final act is quite passionless, almost aloof in nature as the law catches up with Bonnie & Clyde.”

I didn’t like Estelle Parson’s performance at all, I must admit, and can’t fathom how she scored the Oscar for her screechy performance, but the rest of the cast (Gene Hackman especially) are spot on perfect.

Thanks for taking the time to drop by, read and proffer such excellent comments.

Penn was one of those directors who knew what he wanted before he stepped on the set and usually got it and more.

I agree with your posted critique regarding the film’s violence being kept at a distance. To have personalized it would have ruined the film. Also agree with Estelle Parsons. She did grate on the nerves.

Feel free to scroll up and click on FC Contributors and check out my previous reviews. I think you’ll have a good time.

Hi Jack, as always, excellent write-up! I may be the only one who wasn’t aware that Bonnie & Clyde was based on a true story, ahah. I knew John Dillinger was real, another Depression Era public enemy, but somehow this story seemed too crazy to be real, especially that ending, my goodness!! As I researched about the real Bonnie & Clyde, I came across the real car that was photographed after the shootouts, and I also learned how the coroner had so much trouble embalming the bodies as the liquid just kept flowing out of those bullet holes.

In the overall pantheon of Depression Era Desperadoes, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were basically occupying the sub basement When stacked against the likes of John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Alvin Karpis, At least there was a method to their madness. Where Barrow and company basically chose haphazard targets of opportunity and ran until they could run no more.

Ma Barker and her boys and gang shared the same sub basement with the Barrow gang.

Though it was interesting to see the ‘Take No Prisoners’/ ‘Overkill Is Under Rated’ approach of Louisiana law enforcement at the end of the film more than a decade before Peckinpah.

I think one reason why Bonnie and Clyde is so great is what it did to the face of cinema following its release. It ushered in the likes of Easy Rider and encouraged a new way of filmmaking that introduced us to the American new wave.

Bonnie and Clyde came out of nowhere and quickly established a beach head for many films that followed. Easy Rider , as you mentioned. The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, The Last Detail and The Conversation and other classics of the 1970s may not have seen the light of day if it were not for such a groundbreaking film as Bonnie and Clyde .

About me

Hello I'm Ruth! Film is in my blood. LOVE movies of all genres, from Jane Austen to James Bond. Official blogger for the Twin Cities Film Fest (TCFF). I've recently completed my first feature screenplay & produced my first short film HEARTS WANT. Visit facebook.com/heartswantfilm

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